She turns right on Dewey Street. There’s a little park up this way. Susan squirms, bleats. “We go to beat! We go to beat!”
“No, we’re not going to the beach right now.”
“I want go to beat!”
“We don’t have the right clothes on.”
“I want go!”
“That’s just tough, missie, ’cause we’re not going.”
“Why can’t we go?”
“Because I said so.”
Imogen can feel her straining against the straps. She’s doing that thing where she arches her back and balls her fists and twists her head half around. She looks like she’s trying to turn herself inside out.
For some reason she’s often more pliable with Vernon. Hasn’t he noticed that? Of course he hasn’t, he hardly notices her at all. “I’m not sure what to do with a girl,” he said once. “Aren’t daughters your job?” What the hell was that supposed to mean? She knows he doesn’t like his sister or mother, but that’s only because they’re a pair of dolts—does he think all females are as stupid as they are? Does he think none of them could share his interests? Because with men it’s always about sharing their interests, isn’t it? Her father has his bridges and highways, his fishing trips. Everything else he just tolerates. When Imogen first met Vernon and he was so good about helping her with her physics homework, she thought it was about her, but really it was about the physics. He’s never shown the tiniest interest in learning anything about horses, for example.
Oh, she knows he loves her, she knows that—
She and Susan reach the park, which is this funny little strip of grass between Dewey and Ozone, with a metal slide and swings and a splintery old roundabout shedding green paint. There are often one or two dogs here with their owners—as today, thank goodness. Susan likes dogs as much as Imogen does. She likes dogs more than she likes her mother.
“Look, honey! Look at the cute dog!” Imogen unstraps her, helps her out. “Hold my hand—no, you have to hold my hand—is he friendly? he is?—well hello there, sweet boy—you have to be more gentle, honey—”
Peace for a while. The sweet sleepy-eyed Lab, then a nervous ingratiating Miniature Schnauzer who takes their pats trembling, then a brainless Cocker Spaniel (overbred bug-eyed poor little things with their silly ears). Then Susan satisfies herself for a while on the slide—“Mommy, watch!”—then fusses and gripes, then eats the box of Sunkist raisins Imogen threw in the bag on her angry way out the door.
And yes, there’s the wonderful weather. They’ve been here for close to a year now, and the weather is the one thing Imogen likes. The RAND men are impossible, the most self-satisfied horses’ asses she’s ever met in her life, and their wives are either gooses in awe of them or disenchanted drinkers. And she’d always heard about Californians and their cars, but really, it’s ridiculous. On all the neighborhood streets there’s parking up and down both sides, and there are also concrete pads between the houses where you might have a side yard instead, and then instead of any backyards—and these are small plots, you would think every square foot counted—there’s another “avenue,” more like a lane, that runs the length of the block, giving automobile access to sheds and garages. Thirty or forty blocks in any direction, it feels like one gigantic parking lot with sunstruck bungalows and potted trees set down on the pavement. Maybe no one likes to keep a yard or garden because it doesn’t rain enough most of the year. In fact, all this sun can get monotonous. She misses cloud formations. The play of shade and sun. The deep color green on a gray day.
And she misses her work. The Victor Chemical research was dull, but it got her out of the apartment, gave her a daily challenge. Her lab colleagues, mostly women doing the drudge work, could be funny. And making her own goddamn money.
Another dog arrives at the park, a Poodle mix, and Susan gets licked in the face and cries. Imogen picks her up to comfort her, but she struggles furiously in her arms, wailing as though she’s being kidnapped, and Imogen plops her firmly back on her feet, “Have it your way.” Susan throws herself on her stomach and performs the full tantrum: a blur of drumming Mary Janes, pounding fists, chin propped forward on the ground to give the scream maximum projection. Christ, can she pour it out. Other mothers and dog walkers look on—yes, she’s my daughter, I’m the mother who can’t handle her, gaze on us and feel superior.
She sits on a bench nearby and ignores it for half a minute, since she knows nothing will stop Susan except exhaustion. Then can’t stand it anymore and pulls her daughter up, hisses furiously in her ear, “Pipe down!,” and stuffs her into the stroller, pressing hard against her heaving chest while she forces the straps around the flailing limbs. “What’s wrong with you?” She pushes the stroller away from the rapt audience. Instead of heading directly back to the house, she turns randomly left and right, keeping up a brisk pace down the narrow streets, letting the bumps and jostles distract Susan, or maybe comfort her the way Imogen can’t, and the child subsides to whimpering and eventually falls asleep. It must have been time for her nap. Isn’t that what parents always say? It’s not me, it’s fatigue. Now she keeps on randomly turning left and right in order to calm herself down.
From the moment Susan was born, Imogen couldn’t comfort her. She tried everything. Her mother was there supposedly to help, but only criticized. And Vernon left her to it, goo-gahing at Susan with a finger or holding her warily for a minute before handing her back to Imogen the moment she started to fuss. And Imogen’s father hung back with his camera for
